Image by Cyril Bunt. Licensed by Creative Commons.
Okay, by now I’ve pretty much finished the season of heroic overeating, and at this point I’m ready to put away the glass of water with the spoonful of baking soda, climb on the exercise bike, and tell you about Parson James Woodforde.
Woodforde was the parson of a small village near Norwich, in England, from 1776 to 1802, but more importantly he was the keeper of a diary that survived him, and thus left us a chronicle of one of the great unashamed diners of the world, and an era when eating was still a contact sport.
In January 1780, for instance, “We had for dinner a Calf’s Head, boiled Fowl and Tongue, a Saddle of Mutton rosted on the Side Table, and a fine Swan rosted with Currant Jelly sauce for the first course. The Second Course a couple of Wild Fowl called Dun Fowls, Larks, Blamange, Tarts etc etc and a good Desert of Fruit after among which was a Damson Cheese. I never eat a bit of Swan before, and I think it good eating with sweet sauce.” Admittedly, dinner lasted from 2 until 7 p.m., but all the same, this was one meal.
When he went to Norwich and dined with the Bishop, naturally the eating rose in status too: “There were 20 of us at the table… We had 2 courses of 20 dishes at each course, and a Desert after of 20 dishes. Madeira, red and white Wines. The first Course amongst many other things were 2 Dishes of prodigious fine stewed Carp and Tench, and a fine haunch of Venison.” You can almost see the fields of England being depopulated of their wildlife as he writes. “Amongst the second Course a fine Turkey Poult, Partridges, Pidgeons and Sweetmeats. Desert–amongst other things, Mulberries, Melon, Currants, Peaches, Nectarines and Grapes.”
Still, he ate pretty well at home, too. When he unexpectedly has company for dinner he and his cook throw together “some Fish and Oyster Sauce, a nice Piece of Boiled Beef, a fine Neck of Pork rosted and Apple Sauce, some hashed Turkey, Mutton Stakes, Sallad &c a wild Duck rosted, fryed Rabbits, a plumb Pudding and some Tartlets. Desert, some Olives, Nutts, Almonds, and Raisins and Apples.”
Even the servants ate and drank from wall to wall. “I gave them for Dinner some salt Fish, a Leg of Mutton boiled and Capers, a fine Loin of Beef rosted, and plenty of plumb and plain puddings. The drank 7 bottles of Port Wine, and both my large Bowls of Rum Punch, each of which took 2 bottles of Rum to make… We had many droll songs.”
Those songs were undoubtedly droll to the max. A parson he may have been, but stuffy he was not. One of my favorite entries is from New Year’s Eve, 1780, when he was playing host to his friend Mrs. Davie, her daughter Betsy and his own niece Nancy: “This being the last day of the year we were very merry indeed after supper till 12. Nancy and Betsy Davie locked me into the great Parlor, and both fell on me and pulled my Wigg almost to pieces. I paid them for it however.”
Two months later: “Had but an indifferent night of sleep, Mrs. Davie and Nancy made me up an Apple Pye bed last night.” An apple-pie bed, in England, is what over this side of the Atlantic is called “short-sheeting.” And a week after that: “We were as merry as could be, I took of Mrs. Davie’s Garter tonight and kept it. I gave her my Pair of Garters and I am to have her other tomorrow.”
Despite his ecclesiastical position, Woodforde is just as informative about drink, where he is not so much a moralist as a naturalist. Here are two consecutive entries from 1778.
April 15: “Brewed a vessell of strong Beer today. My two large Piggs, by drinking some Beer grounds taking out of one of my Barrels today, got so amazingly drunk by it, that they were not able to stand and appeared like dead things almost, and so remained all night from dinner time today. I never saw Piggs so drunk in my life.”
April 16: “My 2 Piggs are still unable to walk yet, but they are better than they were yesterday. They tumble about the yard and can by no means stand at all steady yet. In the afternoon my 2 Piggs were tolerably sober.”
In 1792 he casually reports “Had a Tub of Rum brought me this Evening,” but this was apparently not as casual a transaction as it seems, for the next day—Sunday–he wrote “We were much agitated this Evening about what I had brought me Yesterday,” not because of the immorality of drinking but because the rum had been smuggled. The following day, “I got up very early this Morning and was very busy all the Morn in very necessary business”–presumably hiding or even burying his smuggled goods.
Hey, I’m as three-cheers-for-sustainable-use-of-resources as the next guy, but somehow this doesn’t strike me as gluttony. There’s a joie de vivre here that leaves me looking pretty pale and mealy (so to speak) by comparison. And yes, this is the level of consumption that eradicated virtually every mammal larger than a mouse from most of Europe and North America but, boy, the guy appreciated food and drink in a way that makes me want to sweep aside all the teeny nouvelle cuisine portions and balsamic reductions on Top Chef and start wading into the roast beast with a pickaxe and a miner’s lamp. Though in truth I just can’t handle anything approaching that scale of food and drink. Over Thanksgiving I spent more time stacking and emptying the dishwasher than actually enjoying the meals–and I still had indigestion more than half the time.
Hence the enduring appeal of this otherwise insignificant country parson. Still, all epic eating and drinking has to come to an end, partly because no amount of eating and drinking makes us live forever, and partly because the fields and streams of East Anglia must have been running short of beef, pigs, fowl, swans, &c. By the end, the diary is a sad book, as we see Woodforde becoming progressively weaker and lonelier. Nobody pulls his wig any more.
The last entry, though as factual as ever, I find deeply moving. It begins:
October 17, Sunday. “Very weak this Morning, scarce able to put on my Cloaths.”
Yet the diary’s last words are somehow reassuring in their sense that some appetites never abandon us, and that Woodforde did not go gently into that good night:
“Dinner today, Rost Beef, &c.”
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